A Letterkenny woman has been horrified to discover she has fallen victim to a bogus call after receiving a phone bill of more than €150.
The woman was targeted by scammers pulling off Wangiri fraud. She told Donegal Woman that the number that called her phone originated from Liberia.
Wangiri fraud involves the scammers calling your phone for a few seconds before hanging up, and when you ring back they will drain your credit.
Over the past few weeks, Donegal residents have been plagued by these bogus calls from countries such as Libya and Macedonia, with area codes +218 and +389 respectively.
Ireland’s communications regulator ComReg is asking people to be vigilant and encourages phone users to ignore such calls.
ComReg advises taking the following precautions:
• Avoid answering calls from numbers that you cannot identify, especially if you are not expecting a call.
• Hang up immediately, on calls where there appears to be no recipient on the other end.
• Be wary of multiple calls being received from the same number.
• Do not call back any number that leaves you a blank voicemail message.
• Do not provide any personal information for example – banking details/PPS number/credit card details/name and address/passport number etc.
Unfortunately there is no way to identify a scam call number, and they can resemble a very normal, familiar, geographical or international number that we would come across on a daily basis.
You can report any suspicious numbers to your network provider.
Have you received unusual calls recently? Let us know in the comments below.
